Can't Stop Feeling, Won't Stop Feeling
by BeaBae
Summary: Toto loves only the things that keep him entertained until the day he can finally meet the Deadman capable of killing him, but Toto does love. Warnings: Canon-typical violence, canon character deaths, full manga spoilers up to 53.


Toto woke to a bland, blank, dull, boring ceiling. He scowled at it, but it didn't go away. He glowered, and it still didn't go away. He considered shouting at it, but that hasn't worked in the past, and so he assumed it wouldn't work now, either.

He asked the guards multiple times to let him redecorate, but they wouldn't let him redecorate the ceiling. His room was filled with balance beams and chin-up bars, bean bag chairs, lego blocks, boy band posters, chick flick films, a king sized bed he had ripped to shreds three times because it was just too damn comfortable and it needed to get over itself. He had a collection of slinkies which he tangled into a knot of unfathomable proportions a week ago, and he was still trying to find the motivation to throw it out. There had once been a small collection of mannequin bits—they had once been full mannequins, until he played doctor—but all the bits were taken out by overly helpful cleaning staff who realized he had been drowning in severed limbs. In the corner there was a large pile of shopping bags. He'd visited every store in the G-Ward over and over, searching for things that interested him. He'd certainly had the CP to buy anything he wanted, but—

Well. His Carnival Corpses never seemed to come soon enough anymore. He was clawing his way to the top, and so his matches were slowly becoming less frequent. The producers were being too slow with trying to root out and create stronger and stronger Deadmen before he killed them.

There was nothing to live for. Nothing but waking up to scowl at the horrible, ugly, dull, uninteresting ceiling.

Oh, the other Deadmen were interesting enough, but every time he tried to pick a fight outside of the Carnival, guards would inevitably arrive and taze them into submission. It was a cheaper and dirtier trick than Toto would ever use himself, and back when he had been a regular human, he had thrived off dirty tricks. He may have been one of the few Deadmen sent to G-Ward for intentionally having committed crimes.

He would still say it wasn't his fault, of course, but not being his fault didn't mean that the skulls he'd busted hadn't been busted intentionally. His big sis was dead. There was nothing to live for. Dying wasn't a big _deal_ if one could just find someone capable of killing them. He could always try to succumb to the creeping death which lingered over the horizon every three days, but what a miserable three days they would be! To boot, he was certain the Wonderland didn't take to suicide attempts kindly. A painful death would have been preferable to a painful life as a test subject.

That was Toto's biggest problem.

Comparatively, climbing out of bed was easy.

Cleaning his room was easy.

Being trapped in a murder-prison-fairground was easy as apple-fucking-pie.

Dying?

Dying was the hardest thing Toto Sakigami ever failed to do.

000

Ever since Toto killed The Stork, he found it mildly amusing to rest by the shopping area and open up a cut on his collar bone. He'd draw out a little rivulet of blood, send it to climb the walls or slither along the floor, until he found someone to torment.

Then, The Stork's Branch of Sin—_Crystal Cleaver_—would turn his blood razor sharp and slice open some poor bastard's leg.

The panic would only last until someone noticed him sitting at the edge of the shops, of course. Then the guards would be called in, he'd be tazed, reprimanded, and carted back to his room for the night with a reminder that fighting outside of Carnivals was strongly discouraged.

Toto tended to ignore that sort of thing. That's why they called the Mockingbird 'battle crazy'. He wasn't, though. There were just very few things that entertained him aside from the immediate threat of violent dismemberment. (For some reason, whenever he actually _said_ that, no one ever realized he was joking. Of course there were other things he liked better, he just had trouble thinking of them on a day-to-day basis in a place where most of the entertainment _was_ some form of dismemberment. )

Funnily enough, the supposed battle craze he was infamous for was the exact reason Crow would grow to hate him so much, once they met, and Crow's anger was the reason Mockingbird found him so fun to mess with.

Crow had been fresh from the outside—he never spent any time topside in Deadman Wonderland, having discovered his Branch of Sin before ever being arrested. Of course, Toto hadn't known that. He didn't make it his business to welcome new guys. He was busy trying to have his fun hidden in a corner of the shopping area, harassing whoever got into his line of sight.

That time in particular—one of the few times he held in his memory—it happened to be Thrush who crossed his corner. She was buying yarn for her knitting. She knit everything from socks to puppets to nooses. Toto slid the Stork up her leg, intending to razor a thin smiley face into the back of her thigh.

She screeched before he had even made the first cut. She summoned her own Branch of Sin, thin threads of blood from her fingertips (_Thrush Thread_, she shouted), and sliced through his Stork. His surprised gasp at the lost connection was enough to reveal his hiding place, even as the still-cohesive Stork razor retreated back into his body.

"Mockingbird!" someone shouted, and, expectedly, the whole place cleared in moments.

Unexpectedly, a stranger was holding a shiny red cleaver to Toto's neck.

"Uh," Toto said. "Hey? What're you doing that for?"

The man with the blood blades protruding from his wrists narrowed his eyes and curled his lips. "I'm holding you until the guards get here," he said.

"Ooh, a good Samaritan," Toto said. "You do realize they're probably going to just taze both of uua_aaaAAAHHH_!"

Though he knew they hurt enough to stop him in his tracks, somehow Toto always forgot just how much the tazers implanted in their collars hurt. Though his blind pain haze, he was at least glad to see that the other man had fallen as well, twisting on the floor gripping his collar, shouting curses and demanding explanations.

They were bound up and transported back to their rooms, given a scolding that reminded them that fighting outside of the Carnival was strongly discouraged, and they were locked away for several hours.

The second time Toto met the Crow was even more memorable, if nothing else, for being one of the few fights outside the Carnival Corpse that Toto didn't initiate.

Crow, despite having all the stealth of a rampaging bull, snuck up on Toto in one of the empty training rooms.

It was a short fight. Most of Toto's fights were short.

Toto came out with a large gash across his back and a twisted ankle, but Crow was on the ground with no less than three broken ribs from a Mince Mallet and a profusely bleeding cut on his forehead.

Toto had the Crystal Cleaver wrapped around Crow's neck, ready at any moment to twitch and decapitate him.

"What is it you're doing?" Crow rasped, the Cleaver constricting his neck enough to hinder his speech. "It changed midway through. What'd you do?"

"I have the Love Labrynth," Toto said, staring down at Crow, fingers ready to twitch. Decapitation imminent. It had been a great fight. A short fight, but a great one. He could feel the blood running down his back from Crow's sneak attack. He could feel the blood pulsing out in time with each beat of his heart. "D'you want a demo?"

"Haven't I been given one already?"

Toto smiled. Just a little bit.

"No," he said. He unwound the Crystal Cleaver and pulled his blood back within himself. Then, very careful to not further damage his back, Toto bent over and smeared his fingers in the blood off of Crow's forehead. He brought his filthy fingers to his mouth and licked. It tasted like dirt, the sour of a gun barrel, and the salt of sweat on a chest. "This is what it does."

With his long fingernails, Toto scratched down his forearms. The Crow Claw erupted out of him.

Crow gasped, his eyes widening. It was far more satisfying than it rightly should have been. "You fucker, that's mine!"

Toto grinned, waving the red blades around happily, pretending he didn't feel the searing pain in his shoulder blades. "Sharing is caring, motherfucker!"

Toto raised his Crow Claw up high above his head, preparing to bring it down for a finishing blow when—

"…you know," he said, pausing with his arms still in the air. Then, after a moment of deliberation, he sheathed the Crow Claw. "You managed to sneak up on me. I'll give you a freebee today. Next time, one of us dies."

He stepped away from Crow's prone body and instead found a nice wall at the edge of the room to slump against. There, he fell back into his stupor, glaring at the boring floor and waiting for the guards to come, taze them, and drag them to the medical ward.

000

It was funny how one life in particular could weight so much more than others.

Toto didn't know how many Deadman he had killed or maimed in the ring, or how many people he'd wrecked in the aftermath of the earthquake, before DW.

He did, however, remember exactly how his sister died.

He had been young when the Earthquake happened—nine, perhaps. Ten at the oldest. He still remembered his sister perfectly.

Maybe it started out as spite—saving someone who wanted to die. Maybe he was spiteful towards his sister. Being obligated to live because it had been either her or Toto, and Toto lived—he was practically contractually obligated to continue living, and it had become a habit, and then a burden, and once he finally decided it wasn't really worth it anymore—

Well. By then he couldn't die.

So maybe it started out as spite when he broke into Yosuga's room a few times each week to force-feed her the Candy and food, and attack those who would harm her as she lay defenseless in her bed. As much as Yosuga complained about his breaking in, she never actually locked her door.

Maybe it started out as spite, calling Yosuga his older sister.

Then, at some point, it perhaps turned to pity, and Toto wondered if this is what it felt like to his older sister to look down at him and see how small and helpless he had been. Perhaps she saw the same withered better-off-as-a-corpse of a kid that Toto saw curled on Yosuga's bed.

Maybe, if was ever happy that his sister had spared him, this would be a way to say he repaid her.

Maybe he could finally get the weight of her life off his shoulders.

000

He watched Owl's fight with vague interest. Yosuga sat on the couch in the lounge while Mockingbird watched upside down—doing a handstand on the armrest.

Owl was fighting Canary.

The fight was rigged. It was painfully obvious.

"Owl needs to shape up," Toto said.

"Yosuga thinks it's sweet," Yosuga said.

"Yeah, but the Promoter won't. I mean, seriously. He's going to get screwed over more than usual in the penalty game."

Yosuga hummed and rested her head in her hands. "Yosuga supposes."

000

"What's been with you lately?" Crow said, gasping for breath from where he lays on the floor as they wait to see if the guards have noticed their fight yet.

"Hm?" Toto said, too busy sucking the gash on his arm to use actual words.

"You're not threatening to kill me," Crow said. He rolled onto his side slowly, pressing his new wound against the floor to try and keep it shut.

The words caught him by such surprise that Toto raised his head to laugh and clap his hands before remembering his injury. The shock it sent rippling down his arm made him yelp out and cradle his arm back against his chest. "Fuck. Don't make me laugh when I'm actually _hurt_, jerk."

Crow craned his neck upwards, staring at Toto through his squinted eyes.

"What?" Toto said.

"You're so fucking weird right now," said Crow. "You've always been a fucking weird little bitch, but lately you've been even weirder than Masu."

"No one is weirder than Masu," Toto said, stroking his injured arm gently, trying to coax his blood to solidify faster. "Not even me."

"Mockingbird," Crow said, sitting up slowly and warily, and pushing himself towards a wall he could lean against. "Why don't you ever kill me—"

Toto was on his feet, sliding down to sit next to Crow in a moment, his feet kicked up and a finger on Crow's lips, stopping him from speaking.

"You've come closer to killing me than anyone else has done since my family," Toto said, grinning his grin, enjoying the way Crow's eyes widened. Implying his family had almost killed him was nothing short of embellishment, but it did make the tale far more exciting, and excitement had kept Toto alive for years. "So, after fighting the Wretched Egg, if I still want to go down in a blaze of glory, you're my contingency plan. So Crow, you're not allowed to die yet."

Still very mindful of the finger against his lips, but also apparently heartened by the guarantee that Toto held some small interest in his livelihood, Crow dared to say, "'Still'?"

Toto might have answered, but he wasn't sure what he would have said. He was spared having to think about it by the guards showing up then, tazing them, and carting them off to their rooms with a warning against fighting outside of carnival corpses.

Toto lay in his room alone until his detention time was up. Yosuga never visited him in his room. No one ever visited him in his room.

It made him mysterious and powerful, to be only known by the people he chose to visit, he supposed. At this point, he only visited two people.

It was a little overwhelming.

His heart buzzed with something like adrenaline at the thought of it.

000

Only Deadmen with perfect records got to battle the Wretched Egg, so when Yosuga came up as his next opponent, there was really no question of what was going to happen.

Really. There wasn't. He wished there was, though.

Mockingbird remembered what happened when Owl forfeited against his girlfriend.

"I'll be fine," Yosuga said. "I've had penalty games before."

"Are you sure?" he said. His voice cracked. He told himself it was remnants of puberty, yet he wasn't entirely sure how he could explain away the welling of tears in his eyes. "I'll make it up to you. I promise. I _promise_."

Yosuga smiled and held him close. She wiped his tears as they fall. "Ssh," she says. "Big sister's here. She knows how much this means to you; Yosuga knows. She's very touched that you care so much about her at all. She understands."

They put on a show, but there was no real competition. Toto didn't claim her Branch of Sin afterwards. He didn't lick her blood. He was a little bit scared he'd like the taste. If anyone noticed anything out of the ordinary—other than the fact that Yosuga was still alive and relatively unharmed, compared to his previous opponents—no one said anything. Mockingbird had won, after all. No one could call that a rigged match.

They took her ovaries in the penalty game. Toto destroyed all the televisions displaying the operation and threatened to murder any Deadman who dared try to watch.

They listened to him. He was furious. Deadmen respected The Mockingbird's fury.

He stayed up late into the night after breaking into Yosuga's room. He didn't even bother hiding when the guards brought her in after she'd been sewn up. He had prepared a stockpile of gentle food and three new books for her, but all thoughts of entertaining her flew out of his head when she arrived and could do little more than lay down on the bed and cry, clutching her midsection.

Any painkillers stronger than child's ibuprofen were some of the most expensive things one could buy in Deadman Wonderland. Some of the quality painkillers were even more expensive than Candy.

Mockingbird splurged and bought Yosuga enough painkiller to last her through the recovery and wean her off any following addictions. It drained his CP account to the bottom.

He didn't care. He had enough Candy for both of them stored away. He had food and supplies, and Yosuga was more important, anyway.

Yosuga was important.

000

He clawed his way to the top. He stood upon a mountain of corpses. He was the most powerful Deadman in the world.

As the guards came to cart him off for his final, greatest, climactic battle with the Wretched Egg, he went singing and waving to Yosuga, who had to stay behind. There was a whole crowd of Deadman watching, staring, scared, and Toto ignored all of them because they weren't _important._"

Yosuga was important. She was his gravekeeper. His St. Peter. She was his big sister, and she was so happy for him she was crying.

Toto shouted, "I'll be with you soon, okay?" to comfort her as the guards steered him into the elevator.

She beamed and shouted back, "Yes! Always!"

The door's close and he could no longer see her face, but even just the memory of it left him smiling until his cheeks hurt.

He'd never been so excited to live.

000

"'You' are going to die now," the old man said.

Toto was in a cage. A bottle. A clear glass tube. Blood, tendrils of it, curled up his ankles, immobilizing him as they went, leaving him defenseless and stiff. The creepy twins were staring at him and—wow, what the hell was going on?

The old man continued to speak.

"So please make those eyes, those fearful, desperate, regreatful, flattering eyes. In the past, there have occasionally been experimental subjects with eyes like yours. Eyes that piss me off…"

It was a funny feeling, fear. Toto hadn't experienced it in a long time. Not since childhood. Not that he was very old; he was only, what, fifteen now? He was still young and in his prime, his hormones hadn't even settled yet and he had been poised to kill for years. The last time he had been scared was when his sister had

Had

Had

_Left_.

Because of the falling rubble. He had found her again in Yosuga, and she was waiting for him, and if the thought of not returning to his big sister didn't scare him then he knew nothing of fear. But this feeling, whatever it was, rattled in his bones, cooled his blood, and made him almost wish he had never won that last fight.

"What is a puppet like you on the brink of death looking forward to?" the old man said, his face twisting into a hideous, wrinkled scowl. "What are you looking at?"

"I won't die!" The words burst out of Toto without his consent, without his consciousness. He couldn't regulate them anymore, and so, he shouted them as loudly as he could, even though the rest of his body was bound in place. "I won't! There's someone important to me! There's someone—"

Only Deadmen with perfect records got to battle the Wretched Egg.

"Silence!" The old man beat the glass tube with his cane. The unfamiliar blood stretched up his body and curled around his neck like a noose, cutting off his voice while the old man kept shouting: "You…you…!"

(Only Deadmen with perfect records got to live long enough to die.)

000

**A/N**

**I get unreasonably upset over how Toto is portrayed in most of the fandom. And I get it, I ****_get it_****, the majority of people watched the anime instead of reading the manga, and even in the manga we only got the barest glimpse of his real personality. It is actually ****_unreasonable_**** how upset I get over his characterization, but you have to understand, the minute I saw this poor bastard, I knew I had found my favorite character. And then they revealed about his sibling issues and tragic past and yet he is still an unrepentant little shitbag, ****_do you know what that does to me?_**

**His flashback chapters stole my heart. But also, Crow's whole "he didn't used to be like this!" thing. That also. I get more upset about the idea of Toto's infamy and the effect it had on the DW (the people in the Scar Chain gossip about him—they long for him to appear again and fight alongside them) and the people who actually knew him and the effect he would have had on those people. Like Crow, and like Yosuga.**

**000**

**If you are one of the many people who have not yet experienced this story or who have only seen the (discontinued) anime, let this serve as a prompt to go read this incredible, glorious, gory manga. I can't really describe just how exciting it is.**

**000**

**I wrote most of this last year over the summer on my way home from Texas. I'm going back there now, so I guess it's an appropriate time to post this, even if it's not really fleshed out or finished or long. Hopefully this won't be my last trip to Texas.**

**Lots of writing this week. This is a good way to go into July. Angel will update sometime around August, but only after I finish birdhousiys commission. (this is a way of me telling everyone I have cheap writing commissions open on tumblr. If you want any.)**


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